Australia’s world-first social media age crackdown has barely begun, and the cracks are already showing.
On the first day of the under-16s ban, teenagers were still managing to sign up for or hang on to accounts on major platforms – but the country’s online safety chief insists those users will eventually be flushed out.
Under-16s who slipped through the cracks “will find themselves booted off at a later time,” eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said on Wednesday.
Teens still signing up as ban kicks in
The ban, which took effect on 10 December 2025, obliges 10 major platforms to stop Australians under 16 from creating or keeping accounts or risk multi-million-dollar fines.
But as Guardian Australia tested the system on launch day using a birth date of 11 January 2011 – clearly under 16 – the results were mixed.
- Kick, Threads, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and X rejected the underage birth date, blocking sign-ups.
- Twitch, Reddit and YouTube still allowed accounts to be registered with that date on Wednesday morning.
At the same time, some teenagers boasted in comments on the prime minister’s social media accounts that they remained on banned platforms, despite the new rules.
ABC News also documented cases where under-16s had sailed through age checks on Snapchat and Instagram using selfie-based tools or altered dates of birth, leaving parents fuming that the ban appeared ineffective on day one.
‘Teething problems’: eSafety says loopholes expected
Inman Grant, the official tasked with enforcing the laws, played down the early gaps, describing them as “teething problems” caused by platforms that only finished their engineering changes at the last minute.
She singled out TikTok, X and Reddit as among the last companies to roll out changes to users, saying they were “a little bit behind on some of their deployments”.
Under the law, all 10 named platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, Snapchat, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch and Kick – must show they are taking “reasonable steps” to prevent under-16s from holding accounts, or potentially face penalties of up to A$50m.
Inman Grant said the regulator would expect continuing upgrades to age-assurance systems and that teenagers who had exploited early gaps would not be safe for long:
Those teens “could find themselves booted off at a later time,” she told the ABC.
She also dismissed fears that teens’ creativity would permanently undermine the system, calling workarounds “isolated cases” and insisting the regulator was “playing the long game” against platforms and underage users determined to push the boundaries.
How the ban works – and who it targets
Despite being widely described as a “ban”, the eSafety Commission stresses that the rules are aimed squarely at companies, not children or parents.
From 10 December:
- People under 16 are not meant to have accounts on the 10 “age-restricted social media platforms”.
- The platforms must use age-assurance measures – from date-of-birth fields to AI-based age estimation and ID checks – to detect and block under-16s.
- There are no fines or criminal penalties for teens themselves or their parents; only platforms can be penalised.
Prime minister Anthony Albanese has framed the law as a delay, not a permanent prohibition: a rule that kids can join social media at 16, not 12 or 13.
To check whether big tech is actually complying, Inman Grant will send formal notices demanding user numbers from the 10 platforms as at 9 December (before the ban) and 11 December (after the ban). Those figures will be compared to see how many under-16 accounts have been cut off and whether new under-age registrations are being blocked.
‘Proud day’ – government hails world-first move
At a launch event at Kirribilli House in Sydney, Albanese called the commencement of the ban a “proud day” and compared it to past Australian reforms on seatbelts, gun laws and tobacco control.
He praised both the conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton and a News Corp campaign that pushed for the laws, and framed the ban as part of a broader effort to “push back against big tech” and assert social responsibility over technology companies.
Communications minister Anika Wells described the moment as one that “sparked a movement”, arguing that social platforms should one day compete on safety records in much the same way car makers now sell vehicles on safety features.
Families who lobbied for the ban after losing children to online bullying or self-harm were invited to the event, many of them describing bittersweet relief that years of campaigning had finally produced legal change, even as they acknowledged this was only “the end of one marathon and the start of another”.
Teens say the law is already “failing”
Outside the official ceremony, the response from many young people was far more sceptical.
Teenagers interviewed by ABC and commercial broadcasters complained that the ban felt like “punishment” for harms they didn’t create and predicted that most of their peers would quickly find ways around age checks – via VPNs, borrowed IDs, alternative apps or simply lying about their birthday.
Some have already migrated to lesser-known platforms that aren’t yet on the restricted list, such as Lemon8 or new niche apps, echoing regulators’ own warnings that “migration” to unregulated spaces was inevitable.
Advocates for young people also worry about unintended consequences: cutting teens off from mainstream platforms used for news, politics and social support, while doing little to tackle the root causes of mental-health problems or bullying.
Platforms under pressure, enforcement just beginning
For the tech companies, the law has meant a rapid scramble to retrofit age-assurance systems into products never designed for hard age gates.
- Meta, TikTok and Snapchat have all begun disabling suspected under-16 accounts and blocking new registrations from Australian users under 16, while promising appeals processes for older teens wrongly identified as too young.
- X (formerly Twitter) confirmed on launch day that it would comply, after weeks of uncertainty.
- YouTube, Twitch and Reddit told reporters they were still rolling out changes, with Twitch saying restrictions would go live once testing and validation were complete.
Under the legislation, eSafety can issue formal notices, demand data on age-assurance performance, and ultimately ask the courts to impose fines if a platform is found not to be taking reasonable steps.
The regulator has also written to about 15 additional companies – including newcomers Lemon8, RedNote and Yope – warning that they may be added to the restricted list if large numbers of Australian under-16s flock to them and use them as de-facto social networks.
‘The kids will be alright’ – or a long fight ahead?
Inman Grant has been frank that the rollout will not be flawless. But she argues that focusing on individual stories of teens who have outsmarted age checks misses the bigger picture.
“Teenage creativity, circumvention and other ingenious ways that people will push boundaries will continue to fill newspaper pages,” she said. “But we won’t be deterred… Australia stands as a global changemaker firmly on the right side of history. The kids will be alright.”
Critics counter that the ban could deepen digital inequality, harm disabled or isolated teens who rely on online communities, and drive young people into less regulated online spaces that are even harder to police. They argue that without parallel investment in education, mental-health services and platform design reforms, age limits alone will not fix what’s broken.
For now, the first tests of Australia’s bold experiment are playing out in real time: teens probing for loopholes, parents weighing benefits and drawbacks, and global tech giants adjusting their systems under the gaze of a small but assertive regulator.
Whether under-16s who dodged the first wave of enforcement really will be “booted off in time” – and whether the law will deliver the promised safety benefits – is likely to define not just the future of the ban, but how other countries judge whether to follow Australia’s lead.
7 years in the field, from local radio to digital newsrooms. Loves chasing the stories that matter to everyday Aussies – whether it’s climate, cost of living or the next big thing in tech.
